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Gilbert Doctorow - Multipolar Shifts at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit | Ep 469, Sep 6, 2025

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Multipolar Shifts at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit

Topics

  • SCO Summit in Tianjin, China
  • China-India Thaw
  • Power of Siberia Gas Pipeline
  • What’s in it for Armenia?

Guest

Hosts

Episode 469 | Recorded: September 4, 2025


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Asbed (00:00:06):

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Conversations on Groong episode.

Asbed (00:00:09):

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization,

Asbed (00:00:11):

(SCO) Summit,

Asbed (00:00:12):

took place in Tianjin,

Asbed (00:00:14):

China,

Asbed (00:00:15):

from August 31 to September 1,

Asbed (00:00:17):

2025.

Asbed (00:00:19):

It was the largest gathering in the SCO's history and may mark a turning point in

Asbed (00:00:23):

the shift from post-World War II order, towards an emerging multipolar world.

Asbed (00:00:28):

To explore its significance,

Asbed (00:00:30):

We're going to be joined by Dr.

Asbed (00:00:31):

Gilbert Doctorow,

Asbed (00:00:33):

who is a veteran Russia watcher,

Asbed (00:00:35):

a historian,

Asbed (00:00:36):

and author who has written extensively on Russia-US,

Asbed (00:00:39):

Russia-EU relations,

Asbed (00:00:41):

and global power transitions.

Asbed (00:00:43):

But first, Hovig has a call to our listeners, a public service announcement for everyone.

Hovik (00:00:49):

Folks, today we'll be talking about the SCO Summit and the new multipolar world.

Hovik (00:00:53):

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Hovik (00:00:58):

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Hovik (00:01:12):

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Hovik (00:01:13):

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Asbed (00:01:32):

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Hovik (00:01:36):

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Now on with the show.

Asbed (00:01:48):

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, welcome to the Groong podcast.

Doctorow (00:01:52):

Thanks for the invitation.

Doctorow (00:01:54):

Welcome, Dr. Doctorow.

Asbed (00:01:56):

So, Dr. Doctorow, this is your first time on our podcast.

Asbed (00:02:00):

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your interests, and your areas of expertise?

Doctorow (00:02:05):

Well,

Doctorow (00:02:06):

I had a doctorate in Russian history,

Doctorow (00:02:08):

which I received from Columbia University,

Doctorow (00:02:10):

but this is a long time ago.

Doctorow (00:02:13):

And I have to say, I consider the title of professor here to be

Doctorow (00:02:18):

which is used by some of my interviewers as being a courtesy title.

Doctorow (00:02:23):

In fact, I do have a doctorate.

Doctorow (00:02:25):

It's an earned doctorate, and I'm very proud of it.

Doctorow (00:02:28):

But I didn't use it to go directly into teaching very briefly.

Doctorow (00:02:33):

And instead,

Doctorow (00:02:34):

I went into a business career at the time when detente was fading,

Doctorow (00:02:38):

but was still real.

Doctorow (00:02:39):

And so I served for five years.

Doctorow (00:02:43):

I had my own company with some support.

Doctorow (00:02:47):

some important partners and was helping.

Doctorow (00:02:51):

This is late 1970s.

Doctorow (00:02:55):

I was helping some primarily American corporations at the board level to arrange

Doctorow (00:03:01):

large-scale projects in Russia.

Doctorow (00:03:03):

That was my first real intense experience of business life in Russia.

Doctorow (00:03:09):

Then, of course,

Doctorow (00:03:10):

after 1979, the invasion of Afghanistan,

Doctorow (00:03:14):

America's interest in trade with Russia disappeared.

Doctorow (00:03:19):

And that was my first experience with sanctions.

Doctorow (00:03:22):

The sanctions that Jimmy Carter put on trade with Russia at the advice of Zbigniew

Doctorow (00:03:30):

Brzezinski finished off my business and gave me a sense of what all of these

Doctorow (00:03:36):

decisions made by officials

Doctorow (00:03:39):

at high levels mean for small, medium-sized companies.

Doctorow (00:03:43):

In the 1980s, I moved to Europe.

Doctorow (00:03:45):

I received a very attractive offer to join a marketing team with ITT Europe and was

Doctorow (00:03:53):

responsible for countries other than Russia.

Doctorow (00:03:56):

I did a lot traveling regularly to Yugoslavia when there still was Yugoslavia and

Doctorow (00:04:01):

Poland and Bulgaria.

Doctorow (00:04:03):

In the 1990s, the world changed.

Doctorow (00:04:07):

Russia became an independent country, a market-friendly country.

Doctorow (00:04:12):

And anyone willing or interested in doing business in Russia had to move to Russia, which I did.

Doctorow (00:04:19):

And it was a volatile time.

Doctorow (00:04:21):

I described this in the second volume of my memoirs,

Doctorow (00:04:26):

which are based on my almost daily and certainly weekly

Doctorow (00:04:30):

diaries of that time, what the business community was like.

Doctorow (00:04:34):

I was a senior executive for luxury goods companies, to be specific in the liquor industry.

Doctorow (00:04:42):

The Russians didn't have enough to drink.

Doctorow (00:04:44):

And so my companies,

Doctorow (00:04:46):

I was working for Seagram's,

Doctorow (00:04:48):

which was then one of the largest companies in the field,

Doctorow (00:04:51):

a Canadian company,

Doctorow (00:04:53):

and United Distillers,

Doctorow (00:04:55):

now known as Diageo,

Doctorow (00:04:57):

which is the world's largest producer of scotch.

Doctorow (00:05:00):

and liquor company in general.

Doctorow (00:05:01):

I was their man in Moscow, the head of their Russian and CIS operations.

Doctorow (00:05:08):

So I spent the 90s doing that.

Doctorow (00:05:09):

And then everything comes to an end.

Doctorow (00:05:13):

And in the new millennium,

Doctorow (00:05:16):

I found a new career,

Doctorow (00:05:17):

which is what I've been doing for the last 15 years as a public intellectual,

Doctorow (00:05:23):

which started in writing with blogs,

Doctorow (00:05:26):

and it has progressed.

Doctorow (00:05:30):

I continued writing several times a week essays on my analysis of current events

Doctorow (00:05:38):

and breaking news.

Doctorow (00:05:39):

But more importantly,

Doctorow (00:05:40):

when I was particularly active in the events around the European Parliament,

Doctorow (00:05:47):

I attended conferences there and

Doctorow (00:05:49):

when I traveled to Russia,

Doctorow (00:05:51):

which was quite often,

Doctorow (00:05:52):

six times a year in the period from 2010 to 2020.

Doctorow (00:05:59):

So I was visiting and I was doing travel notes,

Doctorow (00:06:01):

which I published and which entered into my collected volumes of essays.

Doctorow (00:06:09):

There are six of them.

Doctorow (00:06:11):

There are two volumes of memoirs.

Doctorow (00:06:14):

And most recently, my collection has been entitled

Doctorow (00:06:18):

war diaries about the current war between Russia and Ukraine.

Doctorow (00:06:24):

It is one volume, a very long volume, and 22, 23.

Doctorow (00:06:29):

I am hoping that it will not go into a series of books,

Doctorow (00:06:34):

that the war will end soon,

Doctorow (00:06:36):

and I can put a second volume,

Doctorow (00:06:39):

but first, a third volume on that subject.

Doctorow (00:06:42):

So that is what I've been doing.

Hovik (00:06:44):

We'll make sure to link to those books in our show notes,

Hovik (00:06:48):

which is available at podcasts.groong.org / episode-number.

Hovik (00:06:51):

So whatever this episode number is, and we'll also link from the description.

Hovik (00:06:57):

Doctor, in Armenia, the 1990s were known as the dark and cold years.

Hovik (00:07:04):

Of course, it was a tumultuous time,

Hovik (00:07:06):

and I personally am fascinated by the resurrection of Russia from those ashes of

Hovik (00:07:13):

the 1990s.

Hovik (00:07:14):

As someone who was there, can you tell us your take on how all that happened?

Doctorow (00:07:20):

Well, I was there and in a high position.

Doctorow (00:07:22):

I was attending regularly.

Doctorow (00:07:25):

I had functions within the American Chamber of Commerce and

Doctorow (00:07:31):

which was the single most important business association at the time,

Doctorow (00:07:36):

although the word Americans actually all European companies were also members.

Doctorow (00:07:40):

So in that capacity,

Doctorow (00:07:43):

I went to I went regularly to to their events,

Doctorow (00:07:46):

which you have Russian politicians and other dignitaries speaking.

Doctorow (00:07:51):

But we've got a sense for the quality of the people who are running the country.

Doctorow (00:07:55):

I can tell you that in that period,

Doctorow (00:07:58):

1995 to 2000,

Doctorow (00:07:59):

there were 50,000 expatriate managers in Moscow alone.

Doctorow (00:08:05):

So I was one of a very large cohort and the what was going on was a kind of deception.

Doctorow (00:08:12):

because all international companies were using the big four accountancies and

Doctorow (00:08:21):

international legal firms.

Doctorow (00:08:24):

And their operations in Russia were reporting back to the board that the country was becoming

Doctorow (00:08:33):

normal,

Doctorow (00:08:34):

that the country was becoming legal,

Doctorow (00:08:38):

a country under law,

Doctorow (00:08:39):

that it was a parliamentary country.

Doctorow (00:08:41):

It was all absolute rubbish.

Doctorow (00:08:44):

Anyone who speaks with nostalgia about the Yeltsin years is either a propagandist

Doctorow (00:08:49):

or doesn't know what he's talking about.

Doctorow (00:08:51):

One of the two. There's nothing in between.

Doctorow (00:08:53):

It was not a country under law.

Doctorow (00:08:55):

It was a country that was not a parliamentary democracy because the parliament was oppositional.

Doctorow (00:09:01):

It had a large contingent of Communist Party members.

Doctorow (00:09:05):

And in general, it was oppositional to the intended reforms of economic reforms of Boris Yeltsin,

Doctorow (00:09:14):

which were in practice disastrous and gutted the Russian economy to the point where

Doctorow (00:09:19):

it was reasonable to say in the mid-1990s,

Doctorow (00:09:22):

the Russian economy was the size of the Dutch economy.

Doctorow (00:09:26):

And to understand what's happened since,

Doctorow (00:09:29):

Russia is now the fourth largest economy in the world and the largest economy in Europe.

Doctorow (00:09:35):

That all happened.

Doctorow (00:09:36):

It started in 1998 or so when Primakov,

Doctorow (00:09:40):

a communist,

Doctorow (00:09:42):

was made the prime minister and instituted reforms which were essential for the

Doctorow (00:09:47):

Russian economic recovery.

Doctorow (00:09:49):

These were furthered, of course,

Doctorow (00:09:52):

and built upon by Vladimir Putin from the very beginning of his time in office.

Doctorow (00:10:00):

But what I saw was a country that was with business.

Doctorow (00:10:04):

To do business legally was impossible.

Doctorow (00:10:07):

The laws were changing this way and that way on everything that affected your bottom line.

Doctorow (00:10:14):

In our case, the ability to import liquor was highly criminalized.

Doctorow (00:10:21):

by the government itself.

Doctorow (00:10:23):

I was responsible in my second employment in Russia with Seagram.

Doctorow (00:10:34):

I was responsible for the importation of Absolut Vodka.

Doctorow (00:10:41):

And the year before I came on board, they had a million cases.

Doctorow (00:10:46):

These are cartons of

Doctorow (00:10:50):

of 75 cents per liter bottles, 12 of them.

Doctorow (00:10:56):

And there were a million of them sold.

Doctorow (00:10:59):

When I had my first months in my position as the general manager, it went down to zero.

Doctorow (00:11:06):

It went down to zero because it was completely replaced by fake Absolut,

Doctorow (00:11:13):

which was produced in Hungary

Doctorow (00:11:17):

using bottles that were made in still another country,

Doctorow (00:11:21):

all with the knowledge of people around Yeltsin.

Doctorow (00:11:28):

So that is just an example of the difficulties that my particular business at that

Doctorow (00:11:36):

time was experiencing.

Doctorow (00:11:37):

But all businesses were subject to laws that changed weekly, according to who

Doctorow (00:11:44):

had the ear of Yeltsin at the moment.

Doctorow (00:11:46):

There was no regular legal process.

Doctorow (00:11:49):

Everything was by decree.

Doctorow (00:11:52):

The parliament existed only as a showcase, not as a real legislature.

Doctorow (00:12:00):

That was the period of the Yeltsin years.

Doctorow (00:12:03):

Now, I left in 2002.

Doctorow (00:12:08):

My connections were not only with the business world,

Doctorow (00:12:10):

but in point of fact,

Doctorow (00:12:12):

I had much more activity

Doctorow (00:12:14):

in the cultural life of Russia.

Doctorow (00:12:17):

I was,

Doctorow (00:12:18):

for four years, from 1998 to 2002,

Doctorow (00:12:21):

the chairman of the Russian Booker,

Doctorow (00:12:24):

which was an offshoot of the British Booker.

Doctorow (00:12:28):

It's one of the premier book awards of the world, still today.

Doctorow (00:12:35):

The Russian Booker was established by the founder of the British Booker, who had an interest

Doctorow (00:12:41):

in an intellectual interest in Russian literature and had a business interest

Doctorow (00:12:46):

because they were importing a lot of canned salmon from Russia for the business

Doctorow (00:12:52):

that stood behind the booker.

Doctorow (00:12:54):

That gave me access to people in the arts in general.

Doctorow (00:12:59):

And the arts were flourishing in the period of destitution of the leaders of the

Doctorow (00:13:08):

cultural world like Maestro Gergiev,

Doctorow (00:13:11):

They found solutions.

Doctorow (00:13:13):

Not every institution found a solution, but some of the leading ones did.

Doctorow (00:13:17):

Not the renamed, it was the Leningrad Ballet Company.

Doctorow (00:13:26):

It became the Mariinsky,

Doctorow (00:13:28):

which was the original name,

Doctorow (00:13:30):

and it found Western sponsors,

Doctorow (00:13:33):

and it found joint ventures.

Doctorow (00:13:36):

for joint productions.

Doctorow (00:13:38):

They found solutions, commercially viable solutions.

Doctorow (00:13:42):

And I met with those people.

Doctorow (00:13:43):

I met with the theater world, Yuri Lyubimov.

Doctorow (00:13:50):

I had some experience of this cultural life at the top,

Doctorow (00:13:55):

from the inside,

Doctorow (00:13:56):

which was invaluable and gave me the highest appreciation for what that country

Doctorow (00:14:01):

stands for.

Doctorow (00:14:04):

People in

Doctorow (00:14:05):

today are thinking of it as a warrior state.

Doctorow (00:14:09):

Mr. Trump has spoken of it as the army, the vast army he always had.

Doctorow (00:14:16):

But these are times, signs of the times.

Doctorow (00:14:19):

There's a war going on.

Doctorow (00:14:21):

The real strength of Russia is in many domains.

Doctorow (00:14:26):

And I was privileged to experience it with its cultural arbiters and actors.

Doctorow (00:14:34):

So that gives you a sense of where I'm coming from.

Asbed (00:14:36):

Yeah.

Asbed (00:14:37):

Dr.

Asbed (00:14:38):

Doctorow, we want to talk a little bit about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit

Asbed (00:14:42):

that just happened a few days ago.

Asbed (00:14:43):

This summit was billed as the most consequential SCO gathering to date.

Asbed (00:14:49):

And the meeting highlighted the bloc's scale and ambition from its share of world

Asbed (00:14:54):

population and GDP to the new institutions that it has in a 2035 roadmap.

Asbed (00:15:00):

Leaders adopted the Tianjin Foundation

Asbed (00:15:04):

Launched an SCO development strategy for that strategy for 2035,

Asbed (00:15:08):

admitted Belarus as a full member and flagged new tools such as an SCO development

Asbed (00:15:14):

bank alongside security,

Asbed (00:15:16):

AI and green industry initiatives.

Asbed (00:15:18):

Xi Jinping's remarks set an anti-hegemonistic multipolar tone.

Asbed (00:15:24):

What were your key takeaways from this event?

Asbed (00:15:27):

And is Tianjin a formal pivot to institutionalized multipolarity or an incremental step?

Asbed (00:15:33):

What signals from this event stood out for you as genuine inflection points?

Doctorow (00:15:40):

It is incremental, but it's a big step.

Doctorow (00:15:42):

One doesn't contradict the other.

Doctorow (00:15:44):

It was historic in every sense.

Doctorow (00:15:47):

I'd like to deal with the senses that I think are most important.

Doctorow (00:15:52):

What we were witnessing

Doctorow (00:15:53):

is the conversion of the SCO from what had been founded as a security organization

Doctorow (00:16:05):

by two countries,

Doctorow (00:16:07):

Russia and China,

Doctorow (00:16:08):

to moderate and govern their relations with Central Asia and to deal with two

Doctorow (00:16:16):

security issues that were very timely at the turn of this millennium.

Doctorow (00:16:22):

This was narco-trafficking and most particularly terrorism.

Doctorow (00:16:27):

This is the period of the Islamic State.

Doctorow (00:16:29):

This was a period when there were incursions into Central Asia and into the

Doctorow (00:16:35):

Caucasus from the Islamic fundamentalists.

Doctorow (00:16:40):

And those were motives and the mission statement of the founding of the SCO.

Doctorow (00:16:45):

Incrementally, by baby steps, ever since the remit or the

Doctorow (00:16:51):

The mission of the SCO has expanded.

Doctorow (00:16:53):

Geographically, it's expanded with a certain limitation.

Doctorow (00:16:59):

That is, it is Asia.

Doctorow (00:17:01):

It is Eurasia.

Doctorow (00:17:02):

It is not the world.

Doctorow (00:17:04):

And here,

Doctorow (00:17:05):

what I want to highlight is that the SCO has made an important step to become the

Doctorow (00:17:16):

bricks of Eurasia.

Doctorow (00:17:19):

And why is that important?

Doctorow (00:17:20):

Why would they do that?

Doctorow (00:17:22):

There already is a BRICS.

Doctorow (00:17:23):

Everyone's been talking about BRICS for a decade or more as being the point,

Doctorow (00:17:30):

the dynamic,

Doctorow (00:17:31):

the engine leading world governance in the direction you described,

Doctorow (00:17:37):

multipolarity.

Doctorow (00:17:38):

BRICS, as its founders and most important countries,

Doctorow (00:17:45):

Several that was global in scope and it has South Africa and it has Brazil.

Doctorow (00:17:52):

These are countries which are not terribly interested in the issues which are of

Doctorow (00:17:57):

key importance in Eurasia and particularly between Russia and China.

Doctorow (00:18:03):

And they have dragged their feet on some of the attempts of integration and raising

Doctorow (00:18:13):

the mission of BRICS.

Doctorow (00:18:16):

This includes the decisions not to admit this country or that country,

Doctorow (00:18:21):

which Brazil exercised,

Doctorow (00:18:24):

inhibiting the growth potential of BRICS.

Doctorow (00:18:26):

All right, enough about BRICS.

Doctorow (00:18:28):

Now, by taking over...

Asbed (00:18:30):

That's okay, by the way,

Asbed (00:18:31):

because we actually had questions about how the two,

Asbed (00:18:35):

whether they cooperate or they compete,

Asbed (00:18:37):

so I'm really happy that you're covering BRICS as well.

Doctorow (00:18:40):

Well, I wouldn't say they compete, but what the BRICS...

Doctorow (00:18:45):

self-description, its mission statement, have been incorporated into the SCO mission statement.

Doctorow (00:18:52):

That is moving from security in the narrow sense to economic security in the broad

Doctorow (00:18:59):

sense,

Doctorow (00:19:00):

meaning banking,

Doctorow (00:19:01):

finance,

Doctorow (00:19:03):

trade.

Doctorow (00:19:04):

Of course,

Doctorow (00:19:05):

these issues and this conversion into an economic prosperity mission for the SCO

Doctorow (00:19:12):

has been hastened

Doctorow (00:19:14):

by Mr. Trump's tariff wars and sanctions.

Doctorow (00:19:18):

No question about it.

Doctorow (00:19:20):

His activities in the couple of months preceding this summit did everything

Doctorow (00:19:25):

possible to raise the visibility of trade and finance as a subject that underpins

Doctorow (00:19:32):

security for the member countries of the SCO.

Doctorow (00:19:37):

So this change was facilitated and hastened by Mr. Trump's actions.

Doctorow (00:19:42):

Now,

Doctorow (00:19:43):

what I see is the single most important development at this meeting of SCO,

Doctorow (00:19:49):

the summit in Tianjin,

Doctorow (00:19:51):

was the rise of India.

Doctorow (00:19:54):

As I've been interviewed,

Doctorow (00:19:56):

I felt like the fox was being chased by the hounds,

Doctorow (00:20:00):

by Indian broadcasters,

Doctorow (00:20:02):

for whom what was going on,

Doctorow (00:20:04):

Mr. Modi's visit there,

Doctorow (00:20:05):

was the news of the century.

Doctorow (00:20:07):

But curiously, paradoxically, their view of the whole thing was quite shallow.

Doctorow (00:20:12):

They were focusing on the humiliation of Pakistan,

Doctorow (00:20:16):

and they were missing the point of the rise of their own country.

Doctorow (00:20:19):

The single most important fact was,

Doctorow (00:20:22):

I believe,

Doctorow (00:20:23):

and this we saw in body language in the final moments when the Troika,

Doctorow (00:20:28):

as I've been called,

Doctorow (00:20:30):

Putin, Xi,

Doctorow (00:20:31):

and Modi stood together,

Doctorow (00:20:34):

was, I believe, an open invitation was given to India to become the third member of the governing

Doctorow (00:20:39):

board of the SCO.

Doctorow (00:20:42):

Mr.

Doctorow (00:20:43):

Putin,

Doctorow (00:20:44):

in his speech to reporters today in Vladivostok,

Doctorow (00:20:48):

was saying, oh, no, we're all equal.

Doctorow (00:20:50):

Well, to quote George Orwell, some animals are more equal than others.

Hovik (00:20:55):

Speaking of animals, I guess the dragon, the bear and the elephant, right?

Doctorow (00:21:01):

Well, exactly.

Doctorow (00:21:02):

They are certainly more equal.

Doctorow (00:21:06):

than other members of the SCO.

Doctorow (00:21:10):

This is normal.

Doctorow (00:21:11):

You need a governing board.

Doctorow (00:21:13):

Otherwise, it's chaos.

Doctorow (00:21:15):

The governing board has consisted of two.

Doctorow (00:21:18):

The reporters have not noted, but it's worth mentioning.

Doctorow (00:21:21):

There are two working languages of the SCO, and English is not one of them.

Doctorow (00:21:28):

They are Russian and Mandarin.

Doctorow (00:21:30):

I recommend this to Kaja Kallas, who was speaking

Doctorow (00:21:35):

with some irony about, well, if we're not careful, we'll have to learn Russian.

Doctorow (00:21:40):

Well, if we're not careful, we'll have to learn Chinese also.

Hovik (00:21:43):

Well, for her, she already knows perfect Russian.

Doctorow (00:21:46):

She just chooses not to use it.

Doctorow (00:21:48):

Yes, yes, of course.

Doctorow (00:21:50):

Well, the point is that these are the two countries that have been the leaders.

Doctorow (00:21:54):

Again, our journalists get rather scattered in what their coverage of this.

Doctorow (00:21:59):

All the 25 countries that were there, oh, la, la, la, the 10 international, oh, the 20 leaders

Doctorow (00:22:05):

and the 10 top officials from international organizations.

Doctorow (00:22:09):

Okay, that's all true, but it's missing the point.

Doctorow (00:22:12):

Two countries organized this,

Doctorow (00:22:14):

and two countries have run this,

Doctorow (00:22:17):

and now I believe there will be three.

Doctorow (00:22:19):

I believe India will join.

Doctorow (00:22:20):

Now, why is that important?

Doctorow (00:22:22):

Why would Russia be so amenable to it?

Doctorow (00:22:25):

When it was just speaking only of security as driving the SCO,

Doctorow (00:22:31):

frankly, Russia and China are rather balanced.

Doctorow (00:22:34):

In fact, you could say that Russia has a better army than the Chinese have.

Doctorow (00:22:38):

The Russian army is battle testing.

Doctorow (00:22:41):

The Chinese army is not.

Doctorow (00:22:44):

And the equipment they have is all latest generation.

Doctorow (00:22:49):

So they are pretty equal.

Doctorow (00:22:52):

And they can both stand without making any apologies as being the leaders of this organization.

Doctorow (00:22:58):

But when the mission of the SCO becomes more general prosperity and

Doctorow (00:23:04):

economic strength comes into play, well, there's nothing to talk about.

Doctorow (00:23:08):

China is many times the size of their economy is many times the size of the Russian economy.

Doctorow (00:23:14):

And so the Russians could feel a certain discomfort.

Doctorow (00:23:17):

Bringing India in changes that balance.

Doctorow (00:23:22):

India is also a very large economy and a very large,

Doctorow (00:23:26):

of course, population-wise,

Doctorow (00:23:28):

you're speaking about the two largest populations in the world.

Doctorow (00:23:31):

So for Russia, it gives them more comfort

Doctorow (00:23:34):

as being at the head of this organization when the Indians are at their side.

Doctorow (00:23:39):

And I think the Chinese are not stupid.

Doctorow (00:23:41):

They understand that.

Doctorow (00:23:42):

And so it's by mutual agreement.

Doctorow (00:23:44):

And that is what happened this weekend.

Hovik (00:23:47):

Dr. Doctorow,

Hovik (00:23:48):

to many observers and nationalists on both sides,

Hovik (00:23:52):

the rapprochement between China and India was truly

Hovik (00:23:56):

uh improbable and shocking as you uh recalled already um and for decades the u.s

Hovik (00:24:03):

foreign policy uh has sought to keep china and Russia and china and India and

Hovik (00:24:09):

Russia for that matter i guess apart uh treating their rivalry as a stabilizing

Hovik (00:24:15):

check on Eurasia uh so it's good that you mentioned the symbolism and the steps

Hovik (00:24:21):

that you think are happening um

Hovik (00:24:25):

But, you know, I still want to ask the question, is the U.S.

Hovik (00:24:27):

really losing India?

Hovik (00:24:29):

Or,

Hovik (00:24:30):

you know, as Indians who have been adept at this before are increasing their leverage on all

Hovik (00:24:37):

sides, you know,

Hovik (00:24:38):

will Indians cross the red line with the U.S.

Hovik (00:24:43):

and finally break away from the U.S.?

Doctorow (00:24:46):

I think about a remark that was made by Noam Chomsky.

Doctorow (00:24:50):

at a Massachusetts peace conference in Boston,

Doctorow (00:24:55):

it was 2015,

Doctorow (00:24:56):

in which he said,

Doctorow (00:24:57):

he was speaking of this,

Doctorow (00:24:58):

just the question you raised,

Doctorow (00:25:00):

how can you lose Russia?

Doctorow (00:25:02):

How can you lose a country you don't own?

Doctorow (00:25:04):

And so how can you lose India?

Doctorow (00:25:06):

The United States did not own India.

Doctorow (00:25:09):

And I don't believe it lost anything.

Doctorow (00:25:12):

I believe that Donald Trump knowingly was getting rid of India in one dimension,

Doctorow (00:25:19):

The trade, don't pay attention to the trade issue.

Doctorow (00:25:22):

The war will end.

Doctorow (00:25:23):

The sanctions on India will end.

Doctorow (00:25:26):

And that'll probably be a matter of months.

Doctorow (00:25:29):

And the sanctions are well talked about because they will have a big impact on

Doctorow (00:25:34):

unemployment in India for the textile industry.

Doctorow (00:25:36):

Poorly paid textile workers who now will be unemployed.

Doctorow (00:25:40):

But for India, U.S.

Doctorow (00:25:43):

trade, 80 billion of 100 billion of exports of India to the States is IT.

Doctorow (00:25:50):

And it's untouched.

Doctorow (00:25:51):

Pharmaceuticals, big element of India exports to the United States, untouched.

Doctorow (00:25:57):

Therefore,

Doctorow (00:25:58):

a lot of noise has been made about this,

Doctorow (00:26:01):

which is not really justified in terms of what economic hardship India will

Doctorow (00:26:08):

experience.

Doctorow (00:26:09):

Of course,

Doctorow (00:26:10):

that on top of this,

Doctorow (00:26:12):

insult to injury,

Doctorow (00:26:14):

Donald Trump in his phone calls to Modi insulted him.

Doctorow (00:26:19):

treated him as a dependent, which was a sure way to spoil relations.

Doctorow (00:26:27):

And why would he want to spoil relations?

Doctorow (00:26:30):

And what relations exactly were spoiled?

Doctorow (00:26:32):

To my understanding,

Doctorow (00:26:34):

India is pulling out of the quadrilateral arrangements for containing China.

Doctorow (00:26:39):

And it's a proto, a formation of a NATO in the Indo-Pacific.

Doctorow (00:26:44):

They're pulling out of it.

Doctorow (00:26:45):

But that is what he achieved.

Doctorow (00:26:47):

And I don't believe it was a matter of stupidity, blindness.

Doctorow (00:26:51):

I believe that was his intention.

Doctorow (00:26:53):

So relations with India will always be somewhat good, be good.

Doctorow (00:26:58):

The Indians themselves,

Doctorow (00:26:59):

all the broadcasters I was listening to while waiting for it to be interviewed,

Doctorow (00:27:05):

they clearly want trade and relations with the United States to continue and to be

Doctorow (00:27:11):

resumed.

Doctorow (00:27:12):

It'll happen.

Doctorow (00:27:13):

There's a large part of Indian society, middle class society,

Doctorow (00:27:17):

wants to have very good relations with the states.

Doctorow (00:27:21):

So it will happen.

Doctorow (00:27:22):

But India will not be part of America's planned block formation in the Indo-Pacific.

Doctorow (00:27:29):

And I think that's precisely what Donald Trump wanted to achieve.

Hovik (00:27:33):

Xi Jinping's remarks, as Asbed said, you know, set a really anti-hegemonistic tone.

Hovik (00:27:43):

And Xi specifically said that the SCO is a force against hegemony.

Hovik (00:27:50):

And you said, actually, that some states are more equal than others.

Hovik (00:27:55):

In general, do you see the SCO as a consensus-driven club?

Hovik (00:28:00):

Or do you really think that it's basically...

Hovik (00:28:04):

You know, a blog led by Russia, China, and now India.

Doctorow (00:28:09):

Look, these people who run Central Asia, for example, they're no fools.

Doctorow (00:28:15):

They're highly educated.

Doctorow (00:28:17):

Much, some of them, like Tokayev.

Doctorow (00:28:20):

Tokayev speaks fluent Russian, of course.

Doctorow (00:28:22):

He graduated from GIMO, the higher institute in Moscow that trains diplomats and journalists.

Doctorow (00:28:29):

He speaks fluent Mandarin.

Doctorow (00:28:32):

He was attached to the Russian embassy in Beijing.

Doctorow (00:28:38):

People like that know their own worth,

Doctorow (00:28:44):

and they will not be bullied,

Doctorow (00:28:46):

and they will not be subordinate.

Doctorow (00:28:48):

They will be talking partners with their substantially larger neighbors, of course.

Doctorow (00:28:54):

And I think there will be more balance

Doctorow (00:28:57):

than you could expect or fear, depending on your position.

Doctorow (00:29:03):

These countries will not ride roughshod.

Doctorow (00:29:06):

Just remember,

Doctorow (00:29:07):

the United States was trying to do everything to take these various countries out

Doctorow (00:29:14):

of the orbit of Russia and China,

Doctorow (00:29:18):

just as the United States in the last 25 years has done everything possible to take

Doctorow (00:29:24):

control of the foreign policy of Mongolia.

Doctorow (00:29:28):

with a lot of different projects there.

Doctorow (00:29:30):

Well, the power of Siberia, too, puts paid into that policy.

Hovik (00:29:35):

Yeah, we'll definitely talk about that as well separately.

Hovik (00:29:39):

Before we go,

Hovik (00:29:40):

maybe I should just ask this one question,

Hovik (00:29:43):

which we have, and then we'll go to power of Siberia.

Hovik (00:29:47):

You know, I really want to also,

Hovik (00:29:48):

I think it's worth mentioning the role that China is now playing,

Hovik (00:29:52):

at least visibly in this,

Hovik (00:29:56):

you know, through the media.

Hovik (00:29:58):

As we know, the summit, the SCO summit coincided with China's Victory Day parade.

Hovik (00:30:05):

framed around themes of unity, anti-fascism, and so forth.

Hovik (00:30:10):

Trump,

Hovik (00:30:11):

meanwhile, used Truth Social to recall US wartime sacrifices in China,

Hovik (00:30:17):

ending with a jab that Xi,

Hovik (00:30:19):

Putin,

Hovik (00:30:20):

and Kim were,

Hovik (00:30:21):

and I'm quoting,

Hovik (00:30:22):

conspiring against the United States.

Hovik (00:30:25):

So I want to ask you,

Hovik (00:30:26):

you know,

Hovik (00:30:27):

just shifting the focus to China specifically,

Hovik (00:30:30):

what does the Victory Day signify inside China's political culture today?

Hovik (00:30:35):

And how is it used in external messaging?

Hovik (00:30:37):

Is it as big in terms of messaging and in terms of the value attached to it as it is in Russia?

Hovik (00:30:47):

No, not at all.

Doctorow (00:30:49):

Because Russia has a Victory Day parade every year.

Doctorow (00:30:54):

I think China has it maybe once in 10 years.

Doctorow (00:30:57):

So it plays in the public life, this is what you're describing, it plays a much smaller role.

Doctorow (00:31:03):

But then, of course, China lost enormous number of people.

Doctorow (00:31:07):

The Japanese cruelty was well-documented, it's known.

Doctorow (00:31:14):

However, in every Russian family, someone was lost in World War II, in every family.

Doctorow (00:31:22):

And that isn't a regional question.

Doctorow (00:31:24):

It is the whole of the USSR,

Doctorow (00:31:27):

people from Central Asia who hardly knew where Moscow was on the map,

Doctorow (00:31:33):

and they were sent to the front and they died.

Hovik (00:31:35):

I mean,

Hovik (00:31:36):

even in Armenia,

Hovik (00:31:37):

I think Armenia is one of the highest per capita in terms of casualties in the

Hovik (00:31:42):

World War II.

Hovik (00:31:43):

So definitely, I think that's a big thing in Armenia as well.

Doctorow (00:31:47):

The whole of the Soviet Union suffered terribly, not just the front lines.

Doctorow (00:31:52):

And accordingly, this collective memory.

Doctorow (00:31:56):

Just remember that May 9th is for most Russians,

Doctorow (00:32:01):

including the present young generation,

Doctorow (00:32:05):

a more important holiday than their own birthday.

Doctorow (00:32:08):

The reality is that.

Doctorow (00:32:10):

So in China, nothing of the sort.

Doctorow (00:32:12):

I think the pain was inflicted in certain regions, not in the whole vast country.

Doctorow (00:32:20):

the whole vast country had been suffering under the heel of the colonial powers for

Doctorow (00:32:25):

more than 100 years.

Doctorow (00:32:27):

What the Japanese did was an exaggerated case of punishment and cruelty.

Doctorow (00:32:36):

But going back to the opium wars, China had been exposed to the rapacity of imperial powers.

Doctorow (00:32:49):

But what was he doing?

Doctorow (00:32:51):

What was she doing?

Doctorow (00:32:52):

He was showing off China's capacity to defend itself and to ensure that no further

Doctorow (00:33:00):

impositions from regional or global hegemons would impinge on its path to national

Doctorow (00:33:10):

prosperity and security.

Doctorow (00:33:13):

His meeting, a lot of the native meetings with Kim, of course, it was very important for

Doctorow (00:33:18):

for the Chinese that Kim was there.

Doctorow (00:33:22):

I think he wasn't meeting with the Chinese leadership for seven years or more,

Doctorow (00:33:29):

whereas he had been drawn very close to Russia,

Doctorow (00:33:32):

which certainly must have touched a sensitive nerve in China.

Doctorow (00:33:39):

But I think the saddest thing,

Doctorow (00:33:41):

coming back to the quotation you took from Truth Social of Donald Trump,

Doctorow (00:33:46):

I don't look at the last part of his social message where he's making this,

Doctorow (00:33:54):

using irony in a rather vicious way.

Doctorow (00:33:58):

I look at the first part of it.

Doctorow (00:34:01):

And what I see makes it clear,

Doctorow (00:34:05):

it's very sad that Donald Trump did not,

Doctorow (00:34:09):

could not go to the military parade

Doctorow (00:34:15):

in Beijing to celebrate this 80th anniversary.

Doctorow (00:34:19):

It's understandable that he didn't go to May 9th in Russia this year,

Doctorow (00:34:24):

because going to Russia is an issue all by itself in the United States.

Doctorow (00:34:31):

And he would get brutal criticism from all sides if he did that.

Doctorow (00:34:38):

But I don't think he would be so vulnerable if he found a way to be in

Doctorow (00:34:43):

In Beijing, of course, he would have to have some others there, too.

Doctorow (00:34:47):

He couldn't be trailing behind Lukashenko in the parade.

Doctorow (00:34:53):

That would be a terrible mistake also.

Doctorow (00:34:57):

But to honor properly the American military deaths in the Indo-Pacific,

Doctorow (00:35:06):

he should have been there,

Doctorow (00:35:08):

just as Modi should have been there.

Doctorow (00:35:14):

One and a half million Indians died fighting in the British Imperial Arms in the

Doctorow (00:35:20):

Western and the Pacific fronts.

Doctorow (00:35:23):

And for Modi to ignore that,

Doctorow (00:35:25):

I think,

Doctorow (00:35:26):

was to show disrespect to his own nationals,

Doctorow (00:35:33):

his own compatriots,

Doctorow (00:35:34):

who suffered and died.

Asbed (00:35:37):

Yeah, certainly he would have gotten a better idea of how to put together a military

Asbed (00:35:41):

parade if he had been there.

Asbed (00:35:42):

For sure.

Hovik (00:35:45):

Well,

Hovik (00:35:46):

besides the bluster that,

Hovik (00:35:48):

I mean, is obvious,

Hovik (00:35:49):

does the US really consider now,

Hovik (00:35:52):

I guess,

Hovik (00:35:53):

the SCO as a threat to the West?

Hovik (00:35:56):

Yeah.

Hovik (00:35:58):

I'm just sort of wondering...

Asbed (00:36:00):

Well, there have been at least two Secretary of States who've been talking about

Asbed (00:36:05):

multipolarity.

Asbed (00:36:07):

So there must be some level of anxiety in Washington about the incoming SCOs,

Asbed (00:36:12):

the BRICs that are putting,

Asbed (00:36:15):

if not one poll,

Asbed (00:36:16):

multiple polls on the other side of the planet from the United States.

Doctorow (00:36:20):

Well, allow me to surprise in a positive way what you were saying.

Doctorow (00:36:28):

I have been saying in the last few weeks,

Doctorow (00:36:32):

I have brought out that Donald Trump actually has a few ideas in his head.

Doctorow (00:36:38):

And he actually has a heart,

Doctorow (00:36:40):

something which is denied to him by a large swathe of American society.

Doctorow (00:36:47):

And what he has in his head,

Doctorow (00:36:48):

I believe he learned in the tutorials he received from Henry Kissinger during the

Doctorow (00:36:53):

electoral campaign of 2016.

Doctorow (00:36:56):

And I have proved positive that this is not just wild guess.

Doctorow (00:37:01):

When I look at the national security strategy,

Doctorow (00:37:06):

that document,

Doctorow (00:37:07):

this is an annually produced document in the States of December 2017.

Doctorow (00:37:11):

That's the end of the first year when Trump was in office in his first term.

Doctorow (00:37:18):

And there you have it.

Doctorow (00:37:20):

You have the thinking, the language of Kissinger that is

Doctorow (00:37:26):

set over on top of text that was obviously written by holdover neoconservative

Doctorow (00:37:34):

people in the State Department who produced the document before it was fixed up by

Doctorow (00:37:40):

Trump's people.

Doctorow (00:37:42):

And I'll give you an example, just a very pungent example.

Doctorow (00:37:47):

The original notions were of a world of adversaries.

Doctorow (00:37:52):

And on top of that, there's an overlay

Doctorow (00:37:54):

of a world of competitors.

Doctorow (00:37:57):

Now, does that sound like a Trump today?

Doctorow (00:37:59):

It sure does.

Doctorow (00:38:01):

Trump is not looking for American hegemony.

Doctorow (00:38:06):

He was looking for American advantages in a competing world in the sense that

Doctorow (00:38:15):

Kissinger had in 1994,

Doctorow (00:38:17):

before he was beaten over the head by the neocons.

Doctorow (00:38:20):

and came around to acknowledge that maybe values have some role in foreign policy.

Doctorow (00:38:26):

The idea of Kissinger in his first go with this,

Doctorow (00:38:31):

in a book called Diplomacy,

Doctorow (00:38:32):

which was a masterwork,

Doctorow (00:38:34):

is that the world after the Cold War should evolve in the direction of competing

Doctorow (00:38:43):

powerful states,

Doctorow (00:38:44):

lesser states,

Doctorow (00:38:46):

without blocks.

Doctorow (00:38:49):

And going back to his own dissertation,

Doctorow (00:38:53):

which he never left as a vision of 1815,

Doctorow (00:38:58):

and world diplomacy on the basis of balance of power principles and of concert of

Doctorow (00:39:10):

powers.

Doctorow (00:39:11):

That was the principle of 1815.

Doctorow (00:39:12):

The end of the Napoleonic Wars, which brought peace to Europe until 1870.

Doctorow (00:39:20):

And I think this was Kissinger's vision in 1994 when he and others were writing the

Doctorow (00:39:26):

roadmap to the future after the Cold War,

Doctorow (00:39:28):

that that's what it would look like.

Doctorow (00:39:29):

Of course, it didn't.

Doctorow (00:39:30):

American hegemony was established.

Doctorow (00:39:32):

Kissinger was beaten up by the neocons from Fukuyama on who were speaking of the

Doctorow (00:39:42):

end of history,

Doctorow (00:39:44):

the end of ideology,

Doctorow (00:39:46):

and the American way of life taking control of the world at large.

Doctorow (00:39:50):

But Trump, I think, was influenced by Kissinger's vision of Montana.

Hovik (00:39:56):

Right, right.

Hovik (00:39:58):

So alongside the summit, Russia and China announced a memorandum of Power of Siberia 2.

Hovik (00:40:07):

The Gazprom's chief pitched it as the largest gas project in the industry with

Hovik (00:40:12):

combined projects targeting up to 106 billion cubic meters a year for China.

Hovik (00:40:19):

Now, we should mention that before 2022,

Hovik (00:40:21):

Europe took over 150 billion cubic meters a year from Russia.

Hovik (00:40:26):

So the pivot is quite extreme and strategic,

Hovik (00:40:28):

even if the timelines and final investment decisions are still outstanding.

Hovik (00:40:33):

In your opinion,

Hovik (00:40:34):

does this lock Europe out of Russian gas for good or only harden the status quo

Hovik (00:40:40):

until politics shift?

Doctorow (00:40:43):

Russia's reserves of gas are fast.

Doctorow (00:40:46):

The gas that will be supplied to China in the power of Siberia II was the gas that

Doctorow (00:40:54):

has been going by pipelines until the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and the closing,

Doctorow (00:41:03):

practically speaking,

Doctorow (00:41:04):

the closing of Nord Stream 2.

Doctorow (00:41:07):

This was all destined to go to Europe.

Doctorow (00:41:10):

The fields have not been closed down.

Doctorow (00:41:13):

They have been working underutilized.

Doctorow (00:41:15):

Some of the gas that was being prepared there for shipment to Europe and now will

Doctorow (00:41:22):

be diverted under the power of Siberia to China has been diverted to Russian

Doctorow (00:41:28):

domestic use.

Doctorow (00:41:30):

It isn't widely known that although Russia has been a very big export of gas,

Doctorow (00:41:36):

and let's put things into proportion.

Doctorow (00:41:38):

Gas is gas and oil is oil.

Doctorow (00:41:40):

Big money is oil.

Doctorow (00:41:41):

not gas, but gas still is important.

Doctorow (00:41:44):

I mean, big money in terms of Russia's export revenues.

Doctorow (00:41:48):

Gas is still important.

Doctorow (00:41:50):

And it was being exported at high prices where the domestic price for Russian

Doctorow (00:41:55):

consumers for gas was extremely low,

Doctorow (00:41:58):

probably below the cost of production.

Doctorow (00:42:01):

And so very little was done for 25 years of the last 25 years of Russian gas exports

Doctorow (00:42:12):

to do anything light, to gasify, as they say, Russian households.

Doctorow (00:42:19):

Russia's a cold country and has a lot of wooden houses.

Doctorow (00:42:23):

And what are they heated by?

Doctorow (00:42:25):

Logs.

Doctorow (00:42:26):

Logs, in some places, fuel oil, but very few.

Doctorow (00:42:31):

The typical babushka is living in a little house by a roadside in Russia.

Doctorow (00:42:38):

She's heated with logs.

Doctorow (00:42:41):

And even in residential buildings, in small-sized cities, people were using canisters of gas.

Doctorow (00:42:50):

They were not receiving gas in lines going to their houses or buildings,

Doctorow (00:42:55):

which explains a lot of the tragic explosions that every winter take place in

Doctorow (00:43:02):

Russia.

Doctorow (00:43:04):

It's all from this misuse of the canister gas.

Doctorow (00:43:08):

Well,

Doctorow (00:43:09):

they started to divert some of the gas that was no longer being shipped to Western

Doctorow (00:43:12):

Europe,

Doctorow (00:43:13):

to expanding greatly the network of pipelines to Russian residential housing.

Doctorow (00:43:23):

Looking at the power of Siberia too, people don't talk about it so much.

Doctorow (00:43:27):

There's a spur on that.

Doctorow (00:43:29):

And the spur will be supplying gas to the Russian Far East, which has been energy short.

Doctorow (00:43:38):

One of the Siberian governors was speaking to Putin in this past week on how with

Doctorow (00:43:46):

the expansion of the pipelines from Western Siberia and the North Arctic,

Doctorow (00:43:53):

the two heading east to China and the power of Siberia too,

Doctorow (00:43:57):

they expected to get supplies of gas for the first time to create a very big

Doctorow (00:44:03):

fertilizer production because they had been short of fertilizers.

Doctorow (00:44:07):

In the Far East, they've been importing fertilizer because they can't get enough of it.

Doctorow (00:44:13):

And now they'll be producing it,

Doctorow (00:44:15):

thanks to the gas that will come on a spur from the power of Siberia too.

Doctorow (00:44:20):

So this project is very big, bigger than what's being talked about in supply to China.

Doctorow (00:44:26):

Supply to China will double the pipeline gas from Russia to China.

Doctorow (00:44:31):

It's now 50 billion, that's cubic meters per year, an additional 6 billion

Doctorow (00:44:37):

will be coming from an expanded throughput of Siberia, power of Siberia 1.

Doctorow (00:44:44):

That will happen rather quickly.

Doctorow (00:44:47):

And an additional 50 billion, which is what power of Siberia 2 means for China.

Doctorow (00:44:55):

Altogether,

Doctorow (00:44:56):

between the liquefied natural gas shipments from Russia to China and the pipeline

Doctorow (00:45:02):

gas of 1 and 2,

Doctorow (00:45:04):

power of Siberia,

Doctorow (00:45:06):

Russia will account for about 20% of China's total gas use.

Asbed (00:45:13):

You said soon.

Asbed (00:45:15):

What's your estimate of how quickly these things will pan out?

Doctorow (00:45:19):

Well, the construction of this Siberia 2 pipeline will be time-consuming.

Doctorow (00:45:26):

The projection is in the early 2030s.

Doctorow (00:45:30):

So at least about five years or so.

Doctorow (00:45:34):

Five years or so, exactly.

Hovik (00:45:36):

How will this affect the market in general?

Hovik (00:45:38):

What does a China-first gas map mean for Central Asian suppliers and for LNG

Hovik (00:45:45):

pricing into Europe?

Hovik (00:45:47):

Do you think that it will have an effect on that?

Hovik (00:45:50):

Oh, well,

Doctorow (00:45:50):

this was covered in a rather extensive article that just was put up on the online

Doctorow (00:45:55):

edition of Financial Times.

Doctorow (00:45:57):

Although they've been kicking the tires about this agreement,

Doctorow (00:46:02):

oh, they don't have the financial side of it done,

Doctorow (00:46:04):

don't worry about it.

Doctorow (00:46:05):

the Chinese would not have signed a legally binding memorandum of construction.

Doctorow (00:46:12):

And that is the term that Financial Times gave to it yesterday, legally binding.

Doctorow (00:46:17):

They wouldn't have concluded that if the parties were still wide apart on the

Doctorow (00:46:22):

financing of this,

Doctorow (00:46:24):

because it's expected to lead to large Chinese participation in the financing of

Doctorow (00:46:31):

the construction,

Doctorow (00:46:32):

which will make it

Doctorow (00:46:34):

more economically interesting for the Russian side,

Doctorow (00:46:40):

even if the price of the gas at the end will be substantially lower than what they

Doctorow (00:46:45):

were getting when they were selling this gas to Europe.

Asbed (00:46:49):

For our last segment,

Asbed (00:46:51):

we want to come a little bit closer to where this podcast's central interests are,

Asbed (00:46:56):

and that's Armenia, South Caucasus.

Asbed (00:46:59):

And where these issues intersect is that Armenia,

Asbed (00:47:03):

Azerbaijan, Turkey,

Asbed (00:47:04):

they all attended the SCO summit in Tianjin.

Asbed (00:47:08):

And you mentioned earlier that India seemed to be more interested in slapping down

Asbed (00:47:13):

Pakistan than actually standing centrally on its own merit.

Asbed (00:47:19):

And one way that Armenia experienced that is that India blocked Azerbaijan from

Asbed (00:47:24):

entering the SCO and Pakistan blocked Armenia.

Asbed (00:47:27):

So each country essentially slapped down and blocked the other's ally.

Asbed (00:47:32):

Yeah.

Asbed (00:47:33):

How does a country like Armenia fit in a club that stresses sovereignty and

Asbed (00:47:37):

non-interference when it has acute lingering security concerns and a government

Asbed (00:47:44):

that is widely considered pro-Western?

Asbed (00:47:47):

Speaking about Armenia, actually.

Doctorow (00:47:51):

Look,

Doctorow (00:47:53):

the decision not to admit Azerbaijan was very important to Armenia,

Doctorow (00:47:59):

and it was directly connected with Armenia.

Doctorow (00:48:03):

Not in the sense that you might think of first,

Doctorow (00:48:05):

that is the military relations,

Doctorow (00:48:08):

the fighting that went on over Nagorno-Karabakh and so forth.

Doctorow (00:48:13):

No, a different issue.

Doctorow (00:48:14):

India is very interested,

Doctorow (00:48:16):

and particularly after this nasty exchanges with Trump,

Doctorow (00:48:21):

they're interested in exploring and developing new markets as quickly as possible.

Doctorow (00:48:27):

For them, Central Asia will be new markets.

Doctorow (00:48:29):

To reach Central Asia and to get things from Central Asia,

Doctorow (00:48:32):

the North-South corridor is very important.

Doctorow (00:48:35):

The North-South corridor passes through the Southern Caucasus.

Doctorow (00:48:40):

Therefore, it is of interest to India to ensure that Armenia plays along.

Doctorow (00:48:51):

And we saw this not just in the question of Azerbaijan not being vetoed by India,

Doctorow (00:48:59):

We saw this on our television screens from Tianjin,

Doctorow (00:49:04):

where the unscheduled tete-a-tete between Pashinyan and Putin was shown on Russian

Doctorow (00:49:12):

state television.

Doctorow (00:49:13):

And we heard very clearly,

Doctorow (00:49:14):

a very good Russian,

Doctorow (00:49:16):

that Mr.

Doctorow (00:49:17):

Pashinyan was saying,

Doctorow (00:49:19):

Vladimir Vladimirovich,

Doctorow (00:49:20):

my good friend.

Doctorow (00:49:22):

Well, for Russians, that was quite a development.

Doctorow (00:49:28):

And I don't think it was an accident that it happened in Tianjin.

Doctorow (00:49:33):

And I think that the Chinese and the Indians were partly behind this happening.

Asbed (00:49:40):

So what are the benefits for Armenia to be in the SCO?

Asbed (00:49:44):

And does the SCO actually benefit from Armenia being in it?

Doctorow (00:49:48):

Well, for the reason I just mentioned, in the logistical side, absolutely.

Doctorow (00:49:52):

If this trade goes on in the north-south coast,

Doctorow (00:49:56):

Of course, Armenia will benefit in every which way.

Doctorow (00:50:00):

This also opens market opportunities for Armenia in both directions.

Doctorow (00:50:06):

And there will be a reward for being a facilitator and a cooperator in helping this

Doctorow (00:50:14):

difficult,

Doctorow (00:50:15):

expensive,

Doctorow (00:50:17):

and economically important project to proceed.

Doctorow (00:50:21):

It's been talked about forever.

Doctorow (00:50:22):

Iran was talking about it forever.

Doctorow (00:50:25):

Finally, Iran is

Doctorow (00:50:27):

keenly on board, because it passes through Iran, after all, to reach Mumbai.

Doctorow (00:50:35):

And so this is the connection, to my mind.

Hovik (00:50:40):

All right, well, this seems like a good spot to close our discussion.

Hovik (00:50:45):

Let's leave it here for today.

Hovik (00:50:46):

Thank you, Dr. Doctorow, for joining us, and we hope to have you again in the future.

Hovik (00:50:51):

Thank you so much.

Doctorow (00:50:52):

It was a very pleasant discussion, and thank you for inviting me.

Asbed (00:50:58):

Well, folks, that's our show today.

Asbed (00:50:59):

Second show that we've recorded today, September 4, 2025.

Asbed (00:51:02):

We've been talking with Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, who studied Russian affairs since 1965.

Asbed (00:51:09):

He's a Harvard grad and a Columbia PhD who spent 25 years in business across the

Asbed (00:51:15):

USSR and Eastern Europe.

Asbed (00:51:17):

He later chaired the Russian Booker Prize.

Asbed (00:51:20):

He has published six books of essays,

Asbed (00:51:23):

including War Diaries and the two-volume memoirs of a Russianist.

Asbed (00:51:26):

He lives in Belgium.

Hovik (00:51:28):

And folks,

Hovik (00:51:29):

before we bid you farewell today,

Hovik (00:51:31):

one final request,

Hovik (00:51:32):

which is go to Apple Podcasts,

Hovik (00:51:35):

find us there,

Hovik (00:51:36):

subscribe to us,

Hovik (00:51:37):

and rate our show while you're at it,

Hovik (00:51:39):

if you're already subscribed.

Hovik (00:51:42):

It will go great lengths to help amplify our show and help increase our reach to new audiences.

Hovik (00:51:49):

Yeah.

Asbed (00:51:50):

Share, comment, and like this show and all of our shows.

Asbed (00:51:53):

By the way,

Asbed (00:51:54):

we will try to find all the links to Dr.

Asbed (00:51:56):

Dr. O's books and other things and put them in the show notes,

Asbed (00:52:00):

podcasts.groong.org / episode-number.

Asbed (00:52:03):

You can go there and you can click on his guest webpage or our host webpages.

Asbed (00:52:10):

I'm Asbed Bedrossian in Los Angeles.

Hovik (00:52:14):

And I'm Hovik Manucharyan, currently in Los Angeles.

Asbed (00:52:17):

We'll talk to you soon.

Asbed (00:52:18):

Take care.

Hovik (00:52:19):

Take care.

People on this episode

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Asbed Bedrossian

Co-host
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Hovik Manucharyan

Co-host
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Gilbert Doctorow

Guest

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